300 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Latvian (Page 7)
Les Olympiades (In Latvian: Parīze, 13. rajons)
Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District opens on a Parisian building. More specifically, on a young woman named Émilie (Lucie Zhang in her feature debut), a struggling telemarketer, singing naked in her apartment. Next to her is Camille (Makita Samba), a literary professor, her new roommate, new lover, future ex-roommate, and future ex-lover. Broken credits chop up the action, staggered throughout the first lengthy scene. There’s an ephemeral nature to all of it, the sex and romance just as fleeting as the credits only fully shown for a moment, though Audiard has no problem spending longer with the revolving bodies of this story. Continue Reading →
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off (In Latvian: Tonijs Hauks: Līdz nokritīs riteņi)
Watch afterEncanto (2021), Eternals (2021),
If you’re not a skateboarding fan, you’ll likely only be aware that Tony Hawk exists, rather than anything specific about his life or accomplishments. Maybe you’ll know there’s a bunch of video games named for him, or that he appeared in a Police Academy movie. But the fact that you’ve heard of him, even if you wouldn’t know a quad deck from a cheese sandwich, speaks volumes about both his impact, and his role in bringing mainstream respect to a sport once dismissed as a pastime for bored kids and delinquents. Continue Reading →
Ambulance (In Latvian: Ātrā palīdzība)
About an hour into Ambulance, Michael Bay's latest symphony of steel and bullets and explosions, the two brothers-turned-robbers at the center of this tale (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) take a moment of calm amidst their high-speed run through the alleys and freeways of LA. No, they don't stop driving; they've got a flood of cops on their tail. But the least they can do, with their lives on the line and a cop (Jackson White) bleeding out in the back of their stolen ambulance, is throw on some Airpods and sing along together to Christopher Cross' "Sailing." Continue Reading →
Everything Everywhere All at Once (In Latvian: Viss visur vienlaikus)
SimilarBatman Begins (2005), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Seven Samurai (1954), Zatoichi (2003),
Watch afterGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), The Menu (2022), The Whale (2022), Triangle of Sadness (2022),
StarringKe Huy Quan,
Everything Everywhere All at Once is glorious. Continue Reading →
Top of the Lake
Trigger Warning: assault, sexual assault, date rape Continue Reading →
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (In Latvian: Soniks 2: Filma)
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Jurassic World Dominion (2022), Morbius (2022),
In practice, most video game movies don’t have to worry about sequels. The likes of Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft failed to make anywhere near enough money to justify follow-ups. But there are still theatrical video game movie sequels here and there, now including Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Continue Reading →
Bright Star (In Latvian: Spožā zvaigzne)
I first came to Bright Star through gifs and screenshots, posts on #aesthetic Twitter and Tumblr accounts devoted to sharing loving looks at beautiful people on film. I was already a fan of Ben Whishaw when I became aware of Bright Star, having fallen wholly in love with the entrancing actor in Cloud Atlas and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. With his swoopy hair, his sad eyes, and his impossibly-beautiful waif-like frame, Whishaw can convey longing like few others on screen, positively vibrating in both films with unfulfilled artistic promise and an aching desire to be known, to be loved, to be seen. Continue Reading →
Starstruck
SimilarKeen Eddie, War and Peace,
What happens when you feel a connection with a person, but life and lifestyle seem determined to keep you apart? Continue Reading →
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (In Latvian: Džesija Džeimsa slepkavība)
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 South by Southwest Festival) Continue Reading →
Fate/stay night UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS (In Latvian: Liktenis. Cīņas nakts)
SimilarHitman (2007), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), The Illusionist (2006),
StudioStudio Deen,
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 South by Southwest Festival) Continue Reading →
Turning Red (In Latvian: Es sarkstu)
SimilarAs It Is in Heaven (2004),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Stranger Than Paradise (1984),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Encanto (2021), Morbius (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022),
StudioWalt Disney Pictures,
Continue Reading →
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
StudioHyperobject Industries,
We don’t step foot on an NBA court until the final minutes of the first episode of HBO’s new docu-series, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. This isn’t an accident; it’s a show with more on its mind than the x’s and o’s of a regular-season game. It’s not a series about the game of basketball but about the business of basketball - specifically, the moment the NBA goes from a poorly attended, barely-regarded sports league to the global entertainment juggernaut it is today. Continue Reading →
The Batman (In Latvian: Betmens)
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Morbius (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
The opening shot of Matt Reeves' The Batman evokes, if nothing else, the opening shot of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation: we peer, ominously, through the binoculars of an unseen voyeur, looking at a young boy in a red ninja outfit playing with his father in a Gotham penthouse. While this isn't a flashback to young Bruce Wayne -- rather, we see Gotham's tough-on-crime Mayor Mitchell and his soon-to-be-orphaned boy -- the evocation is undeniable. By the time The Batman's three hours whiz past you, we'll have a similarly probing look into Bruce Wayne himself: what he prioritizes, what drives him, what he thinks he's doing for the city as Batman and what he realizes he should be doing. And it's that texture, that sense of interiority, that makes The Batman one of the best films of the year thus far, and one of the most fascinating cinematic adventures the character has to offer. Continue Reading →
Studio 666 (In Latvian: Studija 666)
Is Satanic panic even a thing anymore? When’s the last time we’ve heard anything about backmasking, or songs somehow influencing impressionable teenagers to kill themselves? It’s entirely possible that this is all still a thing, and I’m simply too old and out of touch to know anything about it. B.J. McDonnell’s Studio 666, the feature film debut of Foo Fighters, is a lovingly hokey homage to a time when “the Devil’s music” was such a grave concern for parents (and Tipper Gore) that Congressional hearings were held about it, and lawsuits were filed against heavy metal bands in an attempt to hold them responsible for what was more likely caused by untreated mental illness and drug abuse. Continue Reading →
Uncharted (In Latvian: Ārpus kartes)
SimilarFinal Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Snakes on a Plane (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Morbius (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021),
StudioColumbia Pictures, PlayStation Productions,
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A treasure hunter walks into a Papa John's franchise in the middle of beautiful Barcelona. He’s there to unlock a complicated puzzle in the hopes of getting one step closer to finding the gold lost during the epic journey of Ferdinand Magellan 500 years prior. The man is Victor “Sully” Sullivan, played by Mark Wahlberg, who appears to be going through the motions without any real fun or excitement, just like this movie. Continue Reading →
Icahn: The Restless Billionaire (In Latvian: Aikans: nemierīgais miljardieris)
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
One marker of a great documentary is a tangible and infectious passion for its central subject matter—an underlying commitment to a topic or idea that drives the very existence of the project. It’s hard to figure out what’s motivating Icahn: The Restless Billionaire, beyond a not-so-faint sense of people wanting to defend why they like an ultra-wealthy capitalist. Though the word restless creeps into the title, the lack of vibrancy in this documentary’s filmmaking indicates that lifeless should’ve been used instead. Continue Reading →
Death on the Nile (In Latvian: Nāve uz Nīlas)
Studio20th Century Studios, Scott Free Productions,
Even if you’re not familiar with Agatha Christie’s vast body of works—she wrote sixty-six detective novels alone—you’ve probably heard of Hercule Poirot. He’s the world’s most famous literary detective, next to Sherlock Holmes. Death on the Nile marks Kenneth Branagh’s second outing directing one of Christie’s Poirot stories and starring as the mustachioed detective himself, following 2017’s tepidly received Murder on the Orient Express. Dogged by COVID-19 delays and scandals surrounding star Armie Hammer, Death on the Nile sometimes feels like it’s scrambling to justify its own existence, and only half-succeeds. Continue Reading →
Le Loup et le Lion (In Latvian: Vilks un lauva)
The history of movies is marked by unlikely duos. Whether it’s in vintage comedy double-acts like Abbott and Costello or the lead characters in classic movies like Paper Moon, cinema has long been defined by oddball pairings that just shouldn’t be. On paper, you couldn’t get a better continuation of that theme than a movie called The Wolf and the Lion, which focuses on the friendship between the titular animals. Unfortunately, despite the promising set-up, this new family movie proves to be a forgettable entry in the canon of unlikely duo cinema. Continue Reading →
Moonfall (In Latvian: Moonfall: Mēness krišana)
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Morbius (2022), The Batman (2022),
StudioLionsgate,
Around the halfway point of Roland Emmerich’s new sci-fi disaster flick Moonfall, our protagonists find themselves in a hell of a predicament. It seems like the world is about to end, the most important people have given up on doing anything about it, and the only ones that have a chance of saving the day are the underestimated, the uninspiring, and the over-the-hill. Despite this, they manage to dust off an abandoned space shuttle, squeeze themselves into some old astronaut suits, and blast away to prevent disaster, and maybe, just maybe, become heroes in the process. Continue Reading →
Jackass Forever (In Latvian: Jackass uz mūžu)
As the old adage goes, "With age comes wisdom." But as Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the rest of the Jackass gang have refreshingly proven, sometimes the best way to stay forever young is to just stick close to your childhood buddies and keep doing the same dumb shit to each other over and over again. And since Jackass aired its first episode on MTV in 2000, that's exactly what they've been doing, finding ever more creative ways to kick themselves (and each other) in the balls, sic wild animals and insects on them, and generally flaunting the rules of polite society and personal safety. With Jackass Forever, the fourth anthology movie in the series, Johnny and the rest are a little older, but no more wiser, and we're all the more thankful for it. Continue Reading →
Scream (In Latvian: Kliedziens)
SimilarBangkok Dangerous (2008), Cube (1997), Cube Zero (2004), Inside (2007), Klute (1971), Let the Right One In (2008),
Shaft (2000) Watch afterThanksgiving (2023),
StarringJack Quaid,
Say what you will about the Scream movies – while they’re almost as absurd as the movies they’re satirizing, they’re also each trying to say something. While the first movie was about slasher movies in general, Scream 2 explored the nature (and necessity) of sequels, while Scream 3 attempted (to less than successful results) a pre-#MeToo spotlight on sexual harassment, and, as an answer to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, Scream 4 focused on social media culture. Wes Craven set out to not just entertain and scare audiences, but to get them to think about what they were watching, exactly, and why. Continue Reading →